Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. With SXSW approaching much too quickly, we're starting to see trailers online for the lesser known films on their slate. These aren't the Evil Deads of the world that get millions pumped into advertising, but low budget, often crowd-sourced, work like the trailer below: Rewind This!
Now this is a documentary about the impact, legacy and importance of VHS, which I at once totally agree with and struggle to completely join in with. Watch the trailer and I'll be back afterwards with some thoughts on the whole VHS thing... PS, check out AICN traitor Drew McWeeny being all smart and stuff!
Here's what I agree with: VHS had a massive impact on the industry and changed the way we watched movies. I have just as much nostalgia for the format as everybody featured in that trailer and used to rent videos all the time, sneak in some slashers during sleepovers, etc.
Where I find I part from a lot of the super proud VHS folk (many of whom are actually good real life friends) is that I don't prefer it as a format. I know a lot of people that do, that view it as vinyl vs. CD, but that's something I totally can't get on board with.
With Blu-Ray I am within a hair of having 35mm quality in my house. Pan and Scan isn't a thing I have to put up with. If I rewatch Jaws 100 times I'm never going to have to fight the tracking and see it fade like film without the benefit of the added resolution (and correct aspect ratio). That's not even going into the price difference (upon release, not now naturally) or storage space required, but purely on quality of the image we're getting.
So, I have nostalgia for the format, but I don't miss it. I may miss some of the awesome hand-painted cover art that came with these releases, but I'll take a sloppy photoshop coverart with a beautiful, near 35mm negative quality 1080p image over a 4:3 cropped low res image with cool coverart any day of the week.
That's my mini-VHS rant, but I will say I'm dying to see the doc, which is one of my most anticipated films of the festival... probably because I feel so split on the issue. Also because I love movie passion no matter what form it's in. I'm sure you'll see some reviews out of SXSW to let you know if Rewind This turned out okay or not.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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